GERMINAL
"You know that if you begin that game again, you little beast, I'll take the skin off your bottom!"
In the Maheu's new stall work was painful. This part of the Filonnière seam was so thin that the pikemen, squeezed between the wall and the roof, grazed their elbows at their work. It was, too, becoming very damp; from hour to hour they feared a stream of water, one of those sudden torrents which burst through rocks and carry away men. The day before, as Étienne was violently driving in his pick and drawing it out, he had received a jet of water in his face; but this was only an alarm; the cutting had simply become damper and more unwholesome. Besides, he now thought nothing of possible accidents; he forgot himself there with his mates careless of peril. They lived in fire-damp without even feeling its weight on their eyelids, the spider's web veil which it left on the eyelashes. Sometimes when the flame of the lamps grew paler and bluer than usual it attracted attention, and a miner would put his head against the seam to listen to the low noise of the gas, a noise of air-bubbles escaping from each crack. But the constant threat was of landslips; for, besides the insufficiency of the timbering, all was patched up too quickly, and the soil, soaked with water, would not hold.
Three times during the day Maheu had been obliged to add to the planking. It was half-past two, and the men would soon have to ascend. Lying on his side, Étienne was finishing the cutting of a block, when the distant growl of thunder shook the whole mine.
"What's that, then?" he cried, putting down his axe to listen.
He had at first thought that the gallery was falling in behind his back.
But Maheu had already glided along the slope of the cutting, saying:
"It's a fall! Quick, quick!"
All tumbled down and hastened, carried away by a restless movement of fraternity. Their lamps danced at their wrists in the deathly silence which had fallen; they rushed in single file along the passages with bent backs, as though they were galloping on all-fours; and without slowing this gallop they asked each other questions and threw brief replies. Where was it, then? In the cuttings, perhaps. No, it came from below;
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